Continue, or call it a day?

[Mr. Torture]

Just now, bdickens said:

Drums too?

Samples, from Mike Shipley's personal library. So realistically, using a modern Kemper and drum software I should be able to at least match a studio album from 30+ years ago, or at least I thought..

Edited April 21, 2022 by Mr. Torture

[Byron Dickens]

17 minutes ago, Mr. Torture said:

Samples, from Mike Shipley's personal library. So realistically, using a modern Kemper and drum software I should be able to at least match a studio album from 30+ years ago, or at least I thought..

You can, but you would also need Mutt Lange and Mike Shipley to go along with the software....

 

I've always considered that album the benchmark for overproduced pablum.

Yuck.

Def Leppard used to rock before that.

[Mr. Torture]

2 minutes ago, bdickens said:

You can, but you would also need Mutt Lange and Mike Shipley to go along with the software....

 

I've always considered that album the benchmark for overproduced pablum.

Yuck.

Def Leppard used to rock before that.

I get it, maybe over produced yes, but still completely commercial pro sounding. I'm more in the camp of the musicians lend more to the sound than the equipment.

[Starship Krupa]

1 hour ago, Mr. Torture said:

The Hysteria album was recorded using Rockman's plugged into the console, no room at all.

Count off the number of people involved in creating Hysteria. You're one guy trying to emulate the work of an army of professionals and consultants.

Metal is a very highly produced and engineered genre, was from the start.

I suggest watching Some Kind Of Monster, or if you've already seen it, maybe watch it again. Proof that legends consider packing it in. From what I understand, the album that came out of their process is also proof that legends can produce clinkers.

[Lee Shapiro]

I haven't read all the replies, so I'm sorry if there are some repeated responses.
I can only tell you my story, and maybe it just might make you feel better about songwriting and making music in general.
I just turned 60 last week (I posted a song about it called "Turning 60" here in the songs forum).   It was a particularly depressing birthday as you might imagine.
But I can honestly say writing that song was very cathartic and actually made me feel better about turning 60.

As far as my songwriting, I have over 100 songs posted in Soundclick from over a span of 40+ years.  I hate the way I sing, I'm not a singer, but often get compared to Dylan, Tom Petty, and sometimes Lou Reed.  Which I take as a compliment.  And I heavily depend on Melodyne because I'm so pitchy. 
But what I want to say is that even at 60, my songs continue to improve even now.   I listen to songs I wrote even just 2 years ago, and  I can hear the vast improvements that have come due to learning new skills and getting better software plugins.   I just got IK's Hammond B-3X and I'm really having a lot of fun with it.

What you said about posting songs and getting only a couple of friends that "like" it.   I had that happen for a very long time.  The same two friends would say "nice job" on Facebook, and I'm not even sure if they actually listened to the songs.   It got very depressing.  Even my best friend since childhood never ONCE commented on any of the songs I posted.  That really hurt.
But lately, over the past two years, (as I said) my songs have been greatly improving.  And I now post to Facebook and also to Songs forum here on this website.
And I started getting a lot of genuinely positive feedback (both here and on Facebook).  I can't tell you after years of being virtually ignored how much it means to me to have talented musicians here tell me that my latest songs are really good.   One friend on Facebook said I should seriously consider selling my songs.

I live alone, my wife passed away in 2014 and my son has moved out and got his own place.   I don't have any friends in this town since I had to stop working because of my bad back. (All my old friends are still back east)  So my music is basically all I have to look forward to.   And the more I improve, and the better feedback I get, inspires me to keep going.  Two years ago, I was like you and ready to give it up.   I still haven't written "my masterpiece" but I feel like I'm getting closer with each new song.
I love the process of jamming until I find a riff that will turn into a song  (I only play keyboards with software emulation for all of my instruments, including a ton of various virtual guitars, basses, keys and drums.)   And I also love the process of putting a song together, mixing and mastering it until it sounds good.  I'm also getting better at doing all of that as well.

So please don't give up.  You need to find the joy again you once had.   I've been listening to a lot of Tom Petty lately, and have found his music to be very inspirational to my song writing.  Also when I watch a documentary about songwriters or music production, that also inspires me to get back on my DAW and write something good.
I hope some of this helps you.   And I hope you find happiness again in whatever you decide to do.

[Tim Smith]

Hey Lee, We pretty much have the same computer!

I post on FB some but am getting away from it because 99% of those who listen to my material are listening on a cell phone. What's the point of mixing if everyone is using a smart phone speaker? It's a little disappointing to hear something you literally spent many hours making on a smart phone, unless they use decent buds.

I'm an older guy too, and I'll admit turning my age bothers me a little bit. Many people look at a number though and figure that because of that number it's time to give up.

If we focus on what we can do, what we are capable of instead of a number, we will have greater success. 

Here is something to think about I pulled from the web-

An extensive study in the U.S. found that the most productive age in human life is between 60-70 years of age. The second most productive stage of the human being is from 70-80 years of age. The third most productive stage is from 50-60 years of age.

There might be a few exceptions to this most notably in the political arena.  Did I just say that?

 

[Lee Shapiro]

28 minutes ago, Tim Smith said:

I post on FB some but am getting away from it because 99% of those who listen to my material are listening on a cell phone. What's the point of mixing if everyone is using a smart phone speaker? It's a little disappointing to hear something you literally spent many hours making on a smart phone, unless they use decent buds.

Hey Tim,  yeah I know what you mean.  I discovered recently that the majority of Facebook users access it via their cellphones.
So whenever I post a song on there, I put the disclaimer: "Best heard through decent speakers or headphones".
Also, I know part of the job of mastering is to make the song sound good through a variety of systems.  So I'll listen to my song in my car, on my laptop, and on my Fire Tablet.   But I don't think any amount of decent mixing or mastering is going to make it sound decent on cell phone speaker.

[Tim Smith]

The read this- "Best heard through decent speakers or headphones", and go for the powerful sound goodness in their laptop. 

Oh yeah......feel the power.

 

[John Nelson]

Hang in there Mr. T. 

With enough time, practice and perserverance I'm sure you can improve  20 to 40%.

[kennywtelejazz]

Each successive song writing & recording session is actually a failure until it isn’t,
The almost impossible odds of creating a musical master piece using only a DAW and ones own  personal computer in a home studio environment doesn't  seem to have much of a hold on our long held desire for optimism .

Kenny

 

Edited April 25, 2022 by kennywtelejazz

[Zo]

On 4/13/2022 at 3:28 PM, Mr. Torture said:

This is my question I ask myself everyday. I'm not a professional song writer, I don't have a full band, I'm 52 years old. There is no outlet to showcase my music and nobody cares about it anyways. I get the occasional like from a buddy, but I feel my era is long gone.

I cannot compete with bands signed to labels like Frontiers and that's the level of quality I expect from myself. I end up with hard drives full of mediocre material. 

It's a lot of work writing, performing, mixing music. So much that it takes the joy out of it. Years ago I could spend every waking moment working on songs, mixing etc. Now I have to force myself to work on it. Anyone else feel this way? Maybe it's just me and I need to give it up. How do you keep going? Where do you showcase your music? Do you get results your completely happy with? Do people actually like your stuff?

Key is to take it as a hobby , and have other activities .... you're just getting mature , and understand that in life other things matters most  , the chance i have is that my job is music related (teaching)  so i don't feel totatlly disconected and i work for hire to mix and master , but creative wise , i keep that for me one time a year escape in south of france where i compose what i mix the rest of the year ...(albums , songs ect ...)

Don't force yourself , alternate technical works and artistic creation .... space creration the more to be in "need" for it , and once your in that processs you'll be super productive ....

[Mr. Torture]

Thanks all for the positive comments and encouragement. I'm at that crossroads of needing a new computer to continue. Should I spend the money? Or should I just leave things be and move on? It's a hard decision for sure. Not that big of a deal when computers were affordable, but now it's just crazy. I really don't want to get into building one, It's a lot cheaper for sure  but with my black cloud something will ultimately go terribly wrong, lol.

[Tim Smith]

What's your present setup @Mr Torture?

 

[Mr. Torture]

2 hours ago, Tim Smith said:

What's your present setup @Mr Torture?

12 year old computer, i7 with standard hard drives. 32 gigs of Ram, RME PCIe soundcard. Cannot record under 256 on the buffers.

2 hours ago, Tim Smith said:

 

 

[Tim Smith]

1 hour ago, Mr. Torture said:

12 year old computer, i7 with standard hard drives. 32 gigs of Ram, RME PCIe soundcard. Cannot record under 256 on the buffers.

 

Is it set up for audio?  I understand it's a lot more fun to buy a new computer than to attempt to squeeze more juice out of an old one.

One possible solution- Buy a MOBO/ cpu combination. You say you don't want to work on a computer. Maybe you know someone who would be willing to do the swap for you ? 

If you already need a general home computer update, I would check my hardware requirements and get one that could be purposed for music.

[Shane_B.]

2 hours ago, Mr. Torture said:

12 year old computer, i7 with standard hard drives. 32 gigs of Ram, RME PCIe soundcard. Cannot record under 256 on the buffers.

 

Any i7 regardless of what Gen it is, especially with 32GB RAM, should be able to handle a lot in regard to home audio recording. You may run in to trouble when you start adding in VST's on multiple tracks and you keep recording tracks, but if you are using CbB just Freeze those tracks and that frees up your resources. Then raise your buffers back up when you are done recording and unfreeze the tracks and everything will be ok.

I'm still running an old i7. See my sig.. I have absolutely no latency problems whatsoever. I was running a very old i5 650 with 4GB of RAM before this and had no problems. I just had to freeze tracks temporarily if I wanted to record new tracks when I had larger projects.

There are settings you should change in your Mobo's BIOS and in Windows. There are guides out there but for some odd reason the big ones like the one at Sweetwater took the BIOS tweak information out of the guides. They aren't the only ones who did that and I don't know why. Maybe BIOS tweaks aren't needed on newer PC's anymore? I don't know.

Basically,

In BIOS you have to lock/set your CPU clock speed by turning off Intel Turbo Boost and set your RAM speed by turning off XMP if your Mobo has it. Also turn off all the C States. They allow your CPU to go in to power saving modes of various forms. You want your CPU to always be on and available, never sleeping. You need as fast and steady stream of data as possible. On most motherboards you can have multiple BIOS profiles so you can have one for DAW usage with all that stuff turned off and another with it all turned on for everything else.

Check out Sweetwater's guide for the Windows 10 related stuff. If you are running Windows 7 or something else there are guides out there for them too.

If you have inexpensive HDD's and they are 5400 RPM that may be a problem if you are recording a lot of tracks at once, but I can't imagine it would be a problem recording one track at a time or a few even. If the drivers for your audio card suck then nothing else you do will help but you need to start by making sure your BIOS and Windows are tuned properly.

You should be able to squeeze a lot of life out of any i7 so you may just have a few setup problems. Good luck!

[Byron Dickens]

 

 

 

Yeah. I have an older i7, half the RAM and none of those issues.

[Zargg]

@Mr. Torture Have you updated your RME drivers lately? https://www.rme-audio.de/downloads.html

Their newest drivers are backwards compatible for Audio Interfaces that came out decades ago. That might help with latency, perhaps.

All the best.

 

 

[Mr. Torture]

Drivers all up to date, everything optimized. I bought this computer from PC audio labs, specifically built for recording. It’s never been the same since the upgrade to windows 10.

[Peter C]

I think we need a dedicated forum section where we can post the kind of stuff we would happily do for free - a kind of collaborators section. A bit like fiver but for free. Quality not guaranteed - not from me anyway - but it sure would lead to interesting results.